


Wake Up

by Calchexxis



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Romance, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:07:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22017595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calchexxis/pseuds/Calchexxis
Summary: Lara and Sam have returned from Yamatai, but they both carry a shadow of the island within them. For Lara it is the sheer weight of death she experienced, for Samantha, the touch of the demonic spirit of Himiko. Together, they lean against one another to find a way back home.
Relationships: Lara Croft/Samantha Nishimura
Comments: 31
Kudos: 198





	Wake Up

One more step.

One more step.

One more step.

What's the most tired you've ever been in your life?

For most people the answer would be simple: They ran a marathon, went for a long hike, or spent the day swimming at the beach. Maybe they played sports; a long summer game of rugby or football.

It leaves a burn in your muscles, a leaden weight in your limbs, and an overwhelming urge to simply lie down and sleep til morning.

That wasn't the kind of tired I was.

"One more step, Lara," Roth said firmly from behind me. "C'mon girl, you're a Croft, just one more step."

Roth was dead.

I watched him die with my own eyes when he took an axe to the spine. I watched him bleed out against a tree, slumped and lifeless, and then I cremated him. Roth was the closest thing I'd had to a father since my own died when I was a little girl.

"You can do it, Lara, just one more step," Alex cheered me on from behind, his voice boyish and good-natured. "You got this!"

Alex was well dead, and unlike Roth there hadn't been anything like enough left to bury. Dead on the Endurance, that cursed, bloody, bastard of a ship that had brought us to Yamatai.

"Don't ye go blamin' the ship, Lara," Grim said, and I could feel his lazy grin from behind me. "Now c'mon lass, one more step."

Dead. Grim was dead. Roth and Alex, both dead. So damn many of those cultists, they were all dead. Whitman, the bloody shitheel, was dead. So was Mathias, the mad bastard.

Dead, dead, dead.

That was the kind of tired I was. The kind of tired where you can hear the dead.

"One more step, Lara," they said in unison, and I grunted my assent, clutching my precious cargo closer to my chest.

In my arms, Sam breathed slow, even inhalations that might as well have been the voices of the saints.

My vision was a gray, narrow tunnel, and every step was uneasy as I struggled not to pitch us both off the side of the cliff.

"One more step, Lara," I mumbled in tune with the ghosts behind me. "One more step."

"One more step," the ghosts chanted, and I turned my head.

God.

There where so many of them.

Hundreds. Stretching out behind me up the length of the path, in various states of ruin. Bodies in all states of devastation that I had left them in. An alarming number of them were blank-eyed, with a single arrow buried in the middle of their skulls.

All dead.

I turned away from them.

All dead.

I looked down.

Sam hung limp in my arms, a single arrow buried between her glassy eyes. No, not Sam's eyes… Her eyes.

Himiko.

"One more step, Lara," the corpse hissed.

I couldn't go any further, I couldn't take one more step. I stopped and fell to my knees, sobbing as Sam's broken body tumbled from my arms, and I let the dead catch me, burying me in a morass of viscera, shattered limbs, and scorched flesh.

* * *

I don't know if I screamed when I woke up, or if I only dreamed the scream, but I was breathing hard as I stared up at the ceiling of my room in Croft Manor.

Everything hurt.

Four weeks in hospital, now I had another ten of recovery ahead of me. 

When I had gotten to a hospital the doctors thought I had been tortured. I had about a hundred minor fractures, three broken ribs, multiple second degree burns, countless torn muscles, a perforated bowel, a raging case of sepsis, and a severe concussion. I spent a full week in ICU under observation, and had no less than four specialists inform me that I'm a walking miracle who ought to be dead twice over.

Sam wasn't nearly as bad off, physically at least. I'm not sure there's a script one can write to treat 'attempted possession'.

After noting that it was still one in the morning, I laid back in my bed for several minutes trying to will myself back to sleep.

Either I had gotten plenty of sleep already or my brain was refusing to venture back into the snake pit of my subconscious.

I didn't particularly blame it.

Throwing my blanket off in a huff, I sat up and sighed, burying my face in my hands.

I was stiff, and my whole body ached as much from the injuries as the sheer backlogged exhaustion of spending several days on a rip-roaring adrenaline high.

Slowly, I made my way to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. When I looked into the mirror I half expected to see that ‘other me’ staring back. The one from Yamatai, the Lara who was covered in blood and ash and all manner of horrible stains.

Instead, the face of a perfectly normal girl stared back at me. Tan skin and long oaken brown hair framing those classic, patrician features of the Croft lineage. The sharp, hawkish nose, high cheekbones, and clear, keen eyes.

I’d been told quite often how damnably like my father looked, mostly by Roth.

One more thing I would never hear again.

"Sam," I muttered her name and straightened up on automatic, ignoring the spikes of agony the action sent through my abused legs and ribs. "I need Sam."

Samantha Nishimura, my best friend, and lately my sole anchor to reality. 

Healthy? Mm, likely not, but I've stopped caring. 

One can only see so many of their friends die horribly before little things like good mental health become a backburner sort of issue.

I stumbled through the halls, pulling my bathrobe on as I let my eyes adjust to the low light and, as I approached her room, I felt my chest tighten.

Sam cried out softly and in an instant I was through her door. She was sleeping, but badly, her brow was furrowed and she was tangled in the sheets, sweating and crying out from her nightmares.

The actual thought of going over to her never really occurred, I moved by reflex to Sam’s side, without much grace I’ll admit, and sidled into bed next to her.

“Ssh,” I muttered quietly, “Sam, you’re dreaming,” I wrapped my arms around her and suddenly she was clinging to me. “Sam you’re-”

I let out a gasp of pain as Sam squeezed me tight, and I tried hard not to think about that crackling sound being my ribs.

“Wh- Lara?” Sam looked up at me blearily, bags under her eyes and sweat covering her from head to toe. “What are you-?”

“You were having a nightmare,” I said quietly, settling in beside her.

“Oh,” Sam shook her head a little like she was trying to clear the drowsiness away. “You heard me from your room?”

I stiffened, then shook my head. A part of me was painfully aware that Sam hadn’t let go of me yet, and a shameful part of me hoped she wouldn’t decide to.

“I was taking a walk,” I replied evenly. “I… had nightmares too.”

“Ah,” she nodded, then rested her head in the crook of my shoulder. “Uhm… Lara?”

“Mm?”

“Would you mind staying here for tonight?” Sam asked in a tiny voice that I barely recognized as hers.

The Sam I knew was loud, brash, and confident. She didn’t have a voice that suited the small sound she was making now. Yamatai had hurt her, badly, at least as badly as it had hurt me, I suspected, if less obviously.

“Of course,” I said, brushing a few dark locks of hair from her eyes. “I’ll always keep you safe, Sam.”

“I know,” Sam whispered back. “If… if I fall asleep again, will you wake me up?”

“Why?”

“Just promise me,” Sam insisted, and I couldn’t help but smile at the fire in her tone.

There was my Sam.

“Alright, fine,” I promised, “I’ll wake you up.”

She seemed to relax at that, and nodded before snuggling up against me, and it was at that point that I had the mortifying realization that she was very naked.

I had my underthings on, obviously, and my bathrobe, but nothing else, although if Sam had any complaints, they went unvoiced.

I had my own share of complaints but they weren’t the kind I could simply ‘say’ without hurting Sam. I couldn’t tell her that holding her like this was making my heart do acrobatics, or that having her so close to me like this was…

“Thank you, Lara,” Sam said sleepily, before yawning widely, “th-thank you.”

It was killing me.

How exactly do you tell your best friend that you’re in love with her, after all? That you’ve always been in love with her? Will always be in love with her?

I don’t think I could have killed that many people for anyone else.

No one but Sam.

“Anytime,” I choked the words out, hoping she put the thinness of my voice up to my exhaustion and pain. “Anything for you, Sam.”

At least that was true enough.

* * *

* * *

I woke Sam up three times over the course of the night, and we both stayed up through until six in the morning. The gray dawn light was barely filtering through the thick fog of the English countryside by the time I sat up in bed beside Sam, rubbing at my eyes which itched abominably.

“Lara…” Sam grumbled, “I think I’m dying.”

“Joke about that again and I’ll kill you myself,” I replied grumpily. “I didn’t climb a mountain and kill a demigoddess for you to die now.”

Sam chuckled, a dry, brittle noise that turned into a weak sob.

“Sam?” I turned to look down at her.

She was curled up in the fetal position, arms wrapped around herself, her shoulders shaking with small cries.

“I’m so tired, Lara,” Sam cried, “I want to sleep… but I can’t, but I’m exhausted, and I feel sick, and… and I’m so fucking scared.”

Blinking in confusion, I reached out to lay a hand on her bare shoulder.

“Why?” I asked quietly, and Sam shook her head.

“Because what if I go to sleep,” Sam started, her eyes wide and staring at nothing, “and then… and then when I wake up, I’m not me anymore? What if I wake up as-?”

“She’s dead,” I bit the word out angrily, “Sam, darling, I emptied two clips into her head and rammed a lit torch through her chest,” I held up fingers as I counted off. “And then she exploded, quite dramatically I might add, and afterward the sun broke over us, it was very cinematic, you’d have approved if you hadn’t been delirious.”

Sam was laughing weakly by the end, and I smiled. I lived for that sound, and fortunately Sam was the sort of person who loved to laugh and, so, did it as often as possible. I’d been afraid after Yamatai that something of that had been lost but no, Sam was stronger than that.

“What makes you think I was delirious?” Sam asked, turning over onto her front to prop herself up on her elbows which, incidentally, gave a very pleasant view of her back and shoulders.

Odd as it may seem, I’ve always thought Sam had exceptionally lovely shoulders.

“Because you were collapsed in front of that stone altar,” I said, shrugging, “and when I finally got to you, you were looking at me like I’d descended from Mount Olympus when, frankly, I look like literal hell.”

“Maybe if you hadn't just pulled off a hat trick that made the Ordeals of Heracles look like a cake walk,” Sam replied, “I wouldn’t have been.”

I frowned at that.

“I got lucky,” I said stiffly as I turned away from her, feeling the weight of all those dead eyes on me again. “Plenty of times I’d have been dead if not for blind luck.”

“That’s not-” Sam began, but I let out a sharp hiss and shook my head.

Then I turned and grabbed her hand, and she let out a squeak of surprise as I pulled it out from under her and pressed it to the packed bandaging under my rib cage.

“There,” I snapped, “a piece of rebar went through me, I’m lucky it didn’t sever my spine, a few inches in one direction or another and I’d have died of massive organ failure!” I moved her hand over to my ribs. “There, broken ribs from a long fall, I’m horribly lucky nothing ruptured, I broke ribs that could have punctured my lungs!”

With every word the look of horror on Sam’s face grew, but the words wouldn’t stop coming.

“Not to mention the multiple times I was beaten, shot, or stabbed!” I snarled as I let go of her, ripped the bathrobe off, and threw it to the ground.

I was covered in knots of scar tissue, some of which would fade, others never would.

“Any one of these could have been lethal,” I said, voice shaking, tears starting to fall down my cheeks like rain. “Any… any one of them could have killed me, Sam… an inch or two to one side or another, and it was pure bloody fortune that a bullet didn’t fragment in a way that killed me… it was luck, Sam.”

Her face was more pale than I ever remember seeing it as she sat up, and for once I couldn’t even feel distracted by her beauty, naked or not. I was too scared to be distracted by anything.

Until that moment I hadn’t really come to grips with just how close to the edge I’d really been.

“Lara… I didn’t…” Sam reached out and brushed a finger gently over one of the long scars across my clavicle.

I knew that one. I hadn’t been fast enough when a Solarii cultist, a big man with two crude axes, had dropped down practically on top of me. He’d cut a long slash across me, and I remember thinking I was dead as I put an arrow through his eye. I thought that he’d cut my throat, and I think that’s what he’d been aiming for.

Sam’s hand wandered to my shoulder where a deep cut was gouged. The bandage was still there and the twenty-three stitches. The doctor said it would leave a notch in my shoulder.

“Stormguard katana,” I said, answering her unasked question as she stared at the bandaged wound. “He got a hand on me and tried to run me through the throat.”

“Oh god,” Sam muttered.

“I twisted and he missed,” I chuckled wanly, looking at the damage, “well… mostly missed, then I emptied my pistol into him at point blank.”

Sam stared at me for several uncomfortable moments. I hardly looked my best at the moment and, I’ll be honest, the few times I’d allowed myself to imagine being in bed with a naked Sam this was not how I had envisioned it.

“I’m probably more scar tissue than skin by now,” I said with a bitter little laugh, “no more daring, strapless evening gowns for me, I suppose.”

“Lara… I’m sorry,” Sam shied back from me, looked chastened. “I… I didn’t think about- shit, I’m sorry.”

“I’ll live,” I said with as much nonchalance as could manage.

“No thanks to me,” Sam said in a quiet, angry voice.

I reached out and took her hand, gripping it firmly, and pulled her a little closer.

“This isn’t your fault,” I said coolly.

Roth had always said I had that ‘Croft’ voice. The implacable, iron quality of voice that my father possessed which always stole the attention of the room whenever he spoke. Croft’s had a quality about them, Roth had said, that didn’t just demand attention, but commanded it.

Sam stared at me, and I could see the self-recrimination in her eyes. I could see the guilt and the pain at my injuries.

“I’d do it all again,” I said quietly. “For you, Sam, I would do it all again, over and over, whatever it took.”

“Why?” Sam shook her head, tearing up as she did. “You almost…- shit, Lara, why?”

“Because…” Because I love you, was the reason. Another ‘Croft’ quality. We’re quite mad about our loved ones, you see. Very intense, us Crofts. “Because you’re the most important person in the whole world to me, Sam.”

That, also, was the truth.

Sam sat up properly, wrapping her arms around herself to preserve some bit of her modesty, though I think it was unconscious. We’d shared plenty of locker rooms together and seen one another’s bits enough for it to be a nonissue.

“Would you have left me behind?” I asked in a voice that came out smaller than I liked.

“Never!”

I actually jumped a bit at the sudden snap of Sam’s voice, and blinked in surprise as she stared at me like I’d just slapped her.

“How dare you even…” Sam started to shake, “I would never leave you behind, Lara… not in a million years.”

“Well then don’t crawl up my arse for doing the same,” I shot back, giving her a playful nudge. “Besides, looking at me now I’m ruined for anyone else. You’re probably the only one who could stand seeing me naked with all these bloody scars.”

I tried to make the joke as light-hearted as possible, but Sam just looked… sick.

“Lara… that’s not true,” Sam said quietly, reaching out to take my hand. “You’re gorgeous… you’ll always be gorgeous, and any man who can’t see that is blind.”

Man. Right.

I suppose that statement precludes Sam have any kind of functional ‘gaydar’ as they say, given that I’ve never so much as been on a date before.

Part and parcel of being hopelessly in love with one’s best friend, I suppose. With Sam around I doubt I'd have even noticed if someone else had been flirting with me.

"Well I'm glad someone thinks so," I reached out and brushed a sweat-stained lock of hair from Sam's face. "You're not so bad yourself."

"Oh, stop it," Sam swatted playfully at my hand as she relaxed a little, her cheeks reddening. "Keep that up and you won't have to worry about it anyway, because I'll be keeping you all to myself."

'Promise?' I thought, a little wanly, and rolled my eyes.

Sam’s jaw dropped open slightly and she blinked like a doe in the headlights, and I froze. 

Had I just-? I mentally replayed the last second and felt my heart plummet into my stomach.

"Promise?" I'd muttered the word under my breath, rolling my eyes as I did.

I… I hadn't meant to actually say that out loud.

"Lara?" Sam said my name in a quiet, worried tone.

“Sorry l…” I stammered, feeling my heart suddenly slam back into its customary residence and start hammering away. “I just meant… I…”

As it turns out, while I can face down hoards of slavering cultists, a small army of ancient samurai, and an age-old Japanese demon empress, I cannot face the best friend whom I may have just metaphorically headbutted as I accidentally stumbled out of the closet.

So I exercised my God-given right as a member of the British aristocracy, and ran.

The door had barely clattered closed behind me before I was halfway down the hall. My limbs were screaming, my ribcage was burning, and my breath was coming in blistering waves that were aggravating bruises and sore muscles of my chest.

“Lara wait!”

I was already down the hall, nearly naked and sprinting. Pain ricocheted through my limbs, only for the sensation to be drowned out by a familiar surge of adrenaline as I cornered hard into my room. I grabbed a pair of pyjama bottoms and yanked them on before pulling a loose shirt over my head that I barely got on before Sam began pounding at my door.

“Lara!”

The decision was made before I even had the opportunity to think on it, and I flung open the wide windows of my room, clambered out, and scaled upward, with the cold English wind whipping my hair into a frenzy as my fingers found handholds in the weatherworn walls of the ancient manor house.

It came back to me like second nature, and I found myself grimly amused that the outer walls of Croft Manor should be so much easier to climb than the storm-slick stone cliffs of Yamatai. I’d had no safety equipment then, no pitons or belay lines, nothing to save me if I lost a handhold or slipped, and I didn’t need any now.

I just needed to get away.

The wounds I’d incurred saving Sam were screaming at me in protest, but I shut out the pain as I mantled the roof with a grunt of effort. I rolled onto my side, laying flat on the long stone lip upon which a number of eroded gargoyles squatted like sullen beasts of burden.

“Shit,” I mumbled, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes as I realised what I’d done. “Shit, shit, shit!”

How could I go back to her like this? How could I look Sam in the face after what I’d just done? Why was I so bloody stupid?

I could have just laughed it off as a joke! Sam and I make those types of jokes all the time! I could have just pretended it was an off-color remark and blown it off! Maybe she might’ve been suspicious, but eventually… eventually we could’ve gone back to normal.

But no, I’d panicked and run, which means I may as well go to the flagpole outside the Manor and run up a pride flag alongside the Union Jack!

Brilliant.

As I lay there panting, I ran my hands over the wound dressings to make sure I hadn’t torn any stitches or started bleeding out. I was used to moving with wounds well enough that I didn’t think I was in any danger but I hadn’t lived through that miserable, hell of an island to die of sepsis on the roof of my ancestral home.

The windows of my room banged open for a second time and I scrambled sideways, trying to conceal myself fully on the roof.

“LARA!?”

Sam’s voice was high and panicked, and it sent a jab of pain and through to my heart. I was so tired of hearing that tone in her voice, I’d heard it far too often and Yamatai, and now I was the reason she was scared.

Tentatively, I turned and peeked over the lip-

“Lara!”

-and met Sam’s gaze as she happened to look up at almost exactly the same time I looked down.

“Shit!” I hissed.

“Lara? Seriously?” Sam’s voice was dripping with incredulity. “Are you seriously on the roof?”

I swallowed thickly, weighing my options, then opted to just stay silent. Maybe she would assume it had been a hallucination brought on by stress and exhaustion.

“Lara…”

Or not.

Damn.

A pebble flew, presumably thrown by Sam, to clatter off the roof a half-meter from my head.

“Lara Croft I swear if you don’t get down here I’m climbing up after you!” Sam yelled, and I felt another surge of panic. Sam was definitely stubborn enough to do that but she was hardly in any shape to.

“Don’t!” I rolled over and poked my head over the lip to look down at her. “You’ll just fall!”

“Then I guess you’d better come down,” Sam replied dryly, crossing her arms over her chest, which was thankfully covered by the bathrobe I’d discarded, as she fixed me with a withering glare underlined by the dark bags beneath her eyes.

“Uhm… no?” I laughed weakly and began to retreat back past the roof prompting another glare from Sam.

“Lara Croft you useless lesbian, get down here now!” She pointed furiously back into my room, and I wilted back for a moment before nodding meekly.

It took some doing, but I managed to lower myself down, taking the steps slowly and eventually swinging myself past Sam and back into my room before stepping back sheepishly from the window while Sam closed it up, pointedly locked it, then turned back to me.

“Don’t suppose we can forget that all just happened?” I ventured, and Sam’s reply was a silent, deathly cool glare. “Or… perhaps not?”

She sighed quietly as she tugged the bathrobe a little more tightly around her, shivering as she did, and I realised that the room must be damned cold. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really notice it anymore, although maybe that would change once I was back in the lap of civilisation for long enough.

I plucked one of the lighter blankets from my bed before Sam could say anything and draped it over her shoulders, wrapping it around her tightly, then drawing back a few more steps than I might have normally. I wasn’t sure if she want me particularly close after-

Sam’s hand intercepted me before I could get more than a step backwards, grabbing at my cold-numbed fingers and pulling me back towards her.

“I didn’t say you could go,” Sam’s voice was a touch sullen, and I stumbled awkwardly as she shifted my feet to keep from backing up any further.

“I just… I thought maybe you’d like if I gave you some space,” I replied, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… to say that thing I said out loud.”

Sam shrugged. “I guess that means you meant it, huh?”

I briefly considered lying, but put that notion to rest immediately. Not only did Sam deserve the truth, I wasn’t much of a liar anyway, and I would probably be an even worse liar to Sam who probably knew me better than anyone else.

“Suppose I did,” I shrugged, pulling my hand back and wrapping my arms around myself. “Like I said… sorry.”

“How long’ve you known?” Sam asked, tone a little more gentle this time. “About being-”

“Gay?” I chuckled bitterly. “Long enough that I spent the whole first day we met back at UCL trying not to think about nice kissing you would be.”

“That long, huh?” Sam gave a weak laugh, and I nodded miserably. “How come you never told me?”

She sounded hurt, and I felt like an absolute heel as I hung my head.

“I’m sorry Sam, I just…” I groaned and slumped down to sit on the edge of my bed. “I was scared you’d feel uncomfortable around me if I told you, and you’re my best friend, so I-”

“Exactly!” Sam snapped. “I’m your best friend, Lara! You really thought I’d turn my back on you?!”

“No!” I reached out and took her hands, “I just didn’t want to… I just… God, I don’t know, I was just scared, alright?!” A quiet sob slipped past my lips and I leaned forward to press my forehead to her knuckles. “I was so scared, Sam… I can’t imagine not having you in my life, that’s all.”

Sam knelt in front of me, free her hands only to use them to cradle my blotchy, crying face. I slipped down from the bed to wrap my arms around her and pull her into a hug, I needed to feel her close and safe beside me again, and to my immense relief she let me.

“I carved a bloody path through that island for you, Sam,” I sobbed. “And all because the thought of losing you scared me more than every bastard cultist and murderer on Yamatai combined.”

“Lara…”

“I love you, Sam,” I cried, I might as well get it all out in the open now or I’d probably never work up the courage again. “I’ve always loved you, and I kn-know you don’t feel that way about me, and it’s al-”

The last few words cut off as Sam pulled back, then pressed her lips to mine.

I froze as I tasted the faint, gentle curve of Sam’s lips for the first time, then melted immediately against her, my fingers tightening around her and pulling her closer into my arms as I savored her. 

Sam is beautiful, even sleep-deprived and pissed off, she’s still so beautiful. Her dark hair is soft, and her skin is softer, and for a very brief splinter of time my body actually stopped hurting because I suspect it may have been just as surprised that Sam was kissing me as I was.

And then the feeling was gone as Sam pulled back, and it was all I could do to keep myself to leaning forward to continue kissing her.

“Uh-uhm…” I flailed around in my own brain for whichever two brain cells I had that I could still rub together to spark a thought, but came up empty.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to talk,” Sam said softly as she took my hands. “Honestly, I’m kind of going in blind, here, okay? I never really thought about being with another girl, but I think if I did I’d… I’d want it to be you.”

“Sam… are you saying-?” I dared to hope, and Sam gave me a weak smile and a shrug.

“I’m saying I’m willing to give this,” she gestured between us, “a shot, and besides…”

She trailed off, mumbling quietly as she withdrew into herself a bit. I leaned forward to close the distance, refusing to let her retreat now that this, apparently, was actually happening.

“What?”

“It’s nothing,” Sam shook her head and tried on a smile that was good, but not good enough to make me buy it. “Forget about it.”

“Soft pass,” I replied dryly, “now talk to me, Sam.”

Sam sighed, then shrugged and shuffled closer before leaning in and curling up against me. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling her shiver and trying not to think about how fragile she was at this moment.

“I said,” Sam began softly, “that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep again if you’re not there next to me.”

A soft blush rose in my cheeks at the notion, but it was quickly quashed by the pain in Sam’s voice as I pressed my lips to the top of her head. 

“I’m just so scared, Lara,” Sam quivered, a shudder of fear running through her whole body. “I’m scared that I’m going to lose who I am… you have no idea what it was like, feeling that thing worm its way inside my skull and start scrubbing out everything that makes me ‘Sam’, then filling in the blank bits with herself.” 

I felt my gorge rise at the thought of it, but I didn’t interrupt. It felt like Sam needed to say this.

“I could feel it happening, every minute of it,” Sam clung to me like I was flotsam, “memories and thoughts, all being washed away, and now-”

“She’s gone,” I whispered against her soft, clean-smelling hair. “She’s gone, and you’re still here, and so am I… we won, Sam, I promise.”

“And then there you were!” Sam cried, her voice cracking into near-hysterical laughter as she clutched at me hard enough to make me fear for my ribs again. “You just… you burned her out of me, and suddenly she was gone and it was just you, standing over me like… like you always have.”

“I’ll always be there for you, Sam,” I promised quietly, “always.”

It took a few minutes, but eventually Sam began to relax into my arms, and I held her close and rocked her as she cried against my chest. I wasn’t sure what I could do about this, I wasn’t even sure there was anything to do. How do I protect Sam from her memories? How do I protect her from waking up screaming in the night every time she has a nightmare about Himiko trying to scourge her soul out of her body?

How do I protect her from that scale of violation?

Maybe the answer was, even if she wakes up screaming, to just be there when it happens. I don’t think there’s anything more I can do, and the notion kills me.

Sam, my Sam, was hurting and there was bugger-all I could do about it.

Slowly, I scooped her up in my arms, ignoring the blaring klaxons of my arms, chest, and legs as I stood up, turned, and moved towards the bed.

It was close, just a step away.

Just one more step.

I laid Sam down, tugging the covers comfortably around her, and before I could stand up she caught my hand in hers.

“Stay?”

I laughed.

“Rabid cultists and mad samurai couldn’t keep me away,” I replied dryly, and that got a little chuckle out of her.

I shucked off my shirt and trousers as I walked to the other side of the bed, pushing the door closed and locking it as I did, no need for old Winston to walk in on us like this. He wouldn’t have an issue with Sam and I, he was the only person I ever told about my feelings in fact, he would just be insufferable about being right that she would accept my feelings.

I turned in time to see Sam tossing the bathrobe off the side of the bed which forcibly reminded me in the clearest terms possible how incredibly naked she was underneath it, and my blush returned full force as she burrowed comfortably beneath the covers and beckoned for me to join her.

Swallowing hard, I nodded and slipped beneath the sheets, and as I did Sam frowned.

“It’s a little… embarrassing, you know,” Sam mumbled sullenly as I laid down beside her.

“What is?”

“Being the only one who’s…” Sam gestured pointedly at herself, then at me, and I quietly choked on my own spit.

“Naked, yes, right,” I stammered.

It was a little tricky given my injuries, but I managed to pull off my bra and pants, and in the short time it took me do so my face had gone from red to scarlet.

Sam gave me an awkward smile before shuffling over a little closer, nestling in against me, and resting her head gently on my shoulder.

“Want me to wake you up?”

Sam looked thoughtful for a few moments before looking up and meeting my eyes with a faintly hopeful smile.

“If I sleep,” she began, “will you be here when I wake up?”

Feeling daring, I curled around her and pulled her chin up until our lips met softly, and Sam let out a quietly happy sigh as she leaned into the kiss.

“I’ll be here,” I promised.

“Then don’t wake me up,” Sam said happily.


End file.
